Examining the Relationship between the Level of Using Social networking sites as Educational Platforms and Undergraduate Students’ Academic Performance: A Comparative Study between Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This research explores Egyptian and Saudi undergraduates’ perceptions of the relationship between the level of using social networking sites as educational platforms and academic performance. Students at two Saudi universities, Qassim University and Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, as well as two Egyptian universities, Al-Azhar University and Minia University, were surveyed about how much they use social networking sites as educational platforms and the relationship between that use and their academic performance. The results of the study showed that there was a higher than average level of using social networks as educational platforms by the research participants, there were no statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the research participants in the overall score and the themes of the scale of using social networks as educational platforms, according to the variable of their country of residence, and according to the gender variable, and finally, the use of social networks as educational platforms contributes significantly to predicting the academic performance of students in the research sample. Overall, the findings of this study can contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between social networking sites use level and undergraduates’ academic performance.